Slashdot Mirror
Mystery "Warm Blob" In the Pacific Ocean Could Be Causing California's Drought
Mr D from 63 writes A mysterious "warm blob" in the Pacific Ocean could be the reason why US West coast states like California are experiencing their worst ever drought, a new study says. From the article: "Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington, began watching the blob a year and a half ago. 'In the fall of 2013 and early 2014, we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,' Bond said in a news release about the studies appearing in Geophysical Research Letters."
Based on a mixed layer temperature budget, these anomalies were caused by lower than normal rates of the loss of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, and of relatively weak cold advection in the upper ocean. Both of these mechanisms can be attributed to an unusually strong and persistent weather pattern featuring much higher than normal sea level pressure over the waters of interest. This anomaly was the greatest observed in this region since at least the 1980s.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
I hope you're just being sarcastic, but in case you aren't
http://www.mercurynews.com/sci...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
a five minute internet search for "California drought history" can point to the fact that California has had water issues for centuries (it can be said of any area as well), it had destroyed Native American Cities and entire empires long before European settlers arrived. A statement in the National Geographic article pretty well sums it up "Unfortunately, she notes, most of the state's infrastructure was designed and built during the 20th century, when the climate was unusually wet compared to previous centuries."
You seem to think that businesses have a right to subsidies, even if they harm society. Let's give patent trolls some subsidies. Sure, they're damaging our society, but think of all the jobs we're lose!
Your assessment is flawed. Warmer temperatures do mean more water can evaporate, but that does not mean it will precipitate in nearby regions. There are many regions around the world that are hot, humid, and still dry as a bone (Somalia, Northwestern Peru, most Middle Eastern countries that border the ocean, etc.).This is like the other bad science assumption often tossed around by deniers: " Well if there is more water vapor then there will be more clouds and so the world will cool down!". No, it doesn't work like that.
There are conditions that need to be met for cloud formation and precipitation. If the atmosphere is stable, then it really doesn't matter how much moisture is present. If a blocking ridge forms over the region, then those warm moist air masses are going to move somewhere else. If there is a thick enough layer of dry air beneath the moist air, then it'll just be virga. If the air masses destabilize before coming ashore, then it'll just dump rain back into the ocean.
But I'm sure you know all this.
~X~
And before that, the meteorologists refered to "the southern oscillation"
It's still called that.
there was El Nino and La Nina - depending on whereabouts in the Pacific the warm surface water was located.
Those are names for the warm and cold phases of that oscillation. The only thing that might have changed is that people are more willing to use the Spanish words to describe the phenomenon.
A few decades ago, before global warming became popular
The Southern Oscillation and Anthropogenic Climate Change refer to different phenomena that are explained by different processes. The only thing they have in common is that they both have something to do with the weather.
The _really_ hot stuff has already decayed. High output = short half-life. The most dangerous stuff is not dangerous because it's especially hot, but because the human body likes to retain and concentrate it (cesium-137, for example).